Friday, July 13, 2007

The white horse is alive and well

Hahaha! That was what happened when I heard that the Defence Ministry has formally charged and reprimanded second lieutenant Li Hongyi after he contravened orders by broadcasting a letter of complaint to other servicemen.

The interesting thing is what Li Hongyi, who is a son of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, did. He had apparently sent an email to the Defence Minister to lodge a complaint against another serviceman. Okay...nothing wrong there. But he is also believed to have copied the email to other servicemen who are not directly under his command and who are not in any official capacity to deal with the matter. Wow! Talk about stupid or what?

Basically Li is said to have written a complaint against another officer whom he alleged had been absent without leave on two occasions. Li also said that he had reported the matter to the officer's supervisors but disciplinary action had not been carried out. As with all complains by white horses in the SAF, MINDEF swung into action. An investigation was conducted and the officer who was found to have been absent without leave will be court-martialled. Then two supervising officers have been issued warning letters for poor judgement in administering inappropriate disciplinary action.

What does this means? It means that if you have a complaint againest anyone in the SAF, you can email the complaint to everyone in uniform. No need to complain to the proper channels, that is just a waste of time. Just email it to everyone and you will just get a warning letter...if you the son of the Prime Minister of course. Hahaha! People, the white horse is alive and very well!

To think that MINDEF has the cheek to say that to maintain organisational discipline, all SAF servicemen with complaints or grievances should take them up through proper channels for redress. Please! If he wasn't the Prime Minister's son, Li Hongyi would have been locked up already. I don't think anyone will argue with that assesment and he deserved to be locked up. If anyone (who is NOT a white son) had sent a complaint to everyone in the SAF, not bothering about the proper channels, what do you think will happen? The guy would be locked up and the keys thrown away! And this guy got a warning letter?